"I'm Your Worst F**king Nightmare"

When pirates boarded his ship, one sailor went rogue. And for the next twelve hours, it was a battle of wits and nerve until the crew got their ship back. The inside story of the Maersk Alabama

**APRIL 8, 3:45 A.M. **

I went up for my watch early, like I always do. The captain, Richard Phillips, was up there already. That wasn't a good sign. In his night orders from a few hours earlier, he had written: "After today's incident, there's no need to say where we are and what's required: early observation and notification. We're in Apache territory with no cavalry in sight. Keep a wary eye. Call me if in doubt or if needed."

About twelve hours before, in the afternoon, pirates had come after us in three little skiffs launched from a mother ship. The seas were rough, though, and they gave up the chase one by one until there was only a lone boat pursuing us. They got within a mile, but eventually those guys gave up and went back to the mother ship as well.

And now we had a ping on our radar. And they were hailing us on the VHF radio. "Stop ship. Stop ship. This is Somali pirate." That's how they do it, I guess; just announce that they're coming for you.

We increased speed, changed course a bit, and the pirates quickly fell back. In less than an hour, their boat was off the twenty-four-mile radar altogether.

**6:30 A.M. **

Captain Phillips, who'd left the bridge at about four twenty after we'd put some distance between us and the pirates, came back up for his coffee at exactly six thirty. Every morning it's the same time, to the second. You could set your watch by it. At six forty-eight, I picked up a faint contact on the radar three and a half miles out. I grabbed the binoculars and found it in the near distance, a sleek fiberglass skiff with an outboard engine, four men on board and moving fast. I put down the binoculars. The sun was up now, and the sea was flat glass, and they were so close and coming so fast I could see them with my naked eye. The pirates had stayed just out of radar range with their mother ship and then launched the skiff, which is almost impossible to pick up until it's on top of you.

We were doing eighteen knots, and the skiff was doing twenty-six. The nearest U.S. Navy ship was 400 miles away. It's a helpless feeling: You're surrounded by 360 degrees of water, no one around to help, and there's a boat full of men with guns getting closer and closer.

At that point, there wasn't much to do but get ready. I went out on deck and fired two red parachute flares at the skiff. Not that I expected they'd do much. But the pirates want the element of surprise, and I wanted them to know we saw them coming.

**7:13 A.M. **

Fucking pirate attack—it's weird, but I almost expected it. I sometimes think the sea was my destiny: I was born the son of a captain on June 12, 1975, the 200th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Merchant Marine. I'd started as a mess cook, worked my way up, went to the Massachusetts Maritime Academy to become an officer, and had even filed my paperwork to become a captain—which I've since become, on another ship. Before this voyage in these pirate-infested waters, I had a feeling my number was going to get called. I even put a comment up on my Facebook page: "You measure a man by how he acts in times of crisis, not in times of prosperity." I thought: Now is my time to be measured.

I was going down to the main deck when the bells sounded: one long, one short, one long, one short—the alarm signal for a security situation. I was yelling to anyone who could hear, "This is real! It's not a drill! Get to your stations now!"

There are two muster stations where we'd gather for emergencies, one in my office on the main deck and the other across from the galley. I could tell the eight guys in my office were scared. I was scared, too, but I was trying to get myself ready for a fight. I was punching the walls and screaming, psyching myself up. The bosun, Will Rios, pulled me aside. "Stay calm," he whispered. "Use your head."

He was right. As chief mate, I was the one people looked at to set an example, to show leadership. I realized we had to think our way out of the problem, because I knew we weren't going to shoot our way out of it: We didn't have any guns.

Company policy forbade firearms, because the insurance premiums go up if there are weapons on board. It also protects the seamen from liability; shoot a fisherman by accident and you could get strung up in the streets of Yemen. But I can say now that if we could have fired a couple of warning shots, those clowns would've turned around and picked on the next guy.

Only a couple of minutes after the general alarm, we heard Captain Phillips on our portable radios: "Shots fired! Shots fired!" The pirates were shooting from their skiff. Fourteen of the crew were sent down to the steering room, a small compartment inside the engine room that we'd retrofitted into a safe room. In fact, just the night before, the third engineer had finished welding its top hatch so it could be locked from the inside. Four other men—Captain Phillips, third mate Colin Wright, and sailors ATM Reza and Cliff Lacon—were on the bridge. That left me and the chief engineer, Mike Perry. We told the captain we'd stay out roving. I didn't have a plan, except to try to repel the pirates or gather intelligence—anything, basically, to keep my ass from being taken hostage and sitting in Somalia for five months. Or sinking into a watery grave.

I shut my office door, tossed my desk against it, and then my chair and a bale of razor wire that was waiting to be installed to keep pirates from boarding the ship in the first place. Minutes later, I heard gunshots on the deck outside. I thought, They're trying to shoot their way in. I got a broomstick and snapped it in half. What the fuck? I said to myself. These guys are already shooting, and I'm standing in my office with a broomstick?

It turned out they weren't coming for me. The pirates were outside, shooting the locks off the ladders so they could get up to the bridge.

Captain Phillips came on my radio. "They're on the bridge. They've got the bridge."

I climbed up to the A deck and kept close to the front of the house—what we call the tall part at the stern, with the crew quarters and mess hall—so no one could see me from above. I heard a lot of yelling, and I decided I needed a place to hide. Below me, on the main deck, there's a path that runs along each side of the cargo hatches so you can walk the whole length of the ship. I knew the stacks of cargo containers would give me cover, but we were sailing light: The nearest hatch, number 5, had containers standing four high, and the farthest, number 1, was also stacked with containers. But that left the stretch between those holds, about 300 feet, wide open with no cover. I was going to have to run like hell.

I stood against the house, melting in my black sweats and T-shirt, the clothes I'd slept in. I'd been on the Alabama for a year, and I'd crawled every inch of that ship. Whenever I ran laps on the deck, I'd think about pirates. So in my head, I'd made this sprint a million times. As I got ready to make my move, time seemed to slow down. I thought about my grandfather, who used to take me out on his lobster boat when I was still in diapers. He had severe brain damage, because he'd been shot in the head in World War II. I told myself, No way that's going to happen to me. I took a breath, cleared my mind, and then jumped to the main deck and started running. I didn't turn around. I got to the containers at the forward hold, ducked into the shadows, panting. No shots. No one had seen me.

Once I'd caught my breath, I worked my way to the port side. I could see the pirates' skiff at midship. There were two men on board, barefoot, dressed in ratty T-shirts and carrying AK-47's. I keyed my radio to tell Captain Phillips what I could see. The two pirates could hear what we were saying, but that doesn't mean they could understand. The captain speaks even faster than me—and that's saying something—and we're both from New England, so we could communicate in our Boston slang and those guys would have no idea what was going on.

I told the captain to tell the pirates we had only nineteen crew. He understood right away. The idea was to leave me out of the count so the pirates wouldn't be looking for a twentieth crewman; that way, I could keep prowling around until I figured out a way to fuck up their operation.

**8:30 A.M. **

Twenty minutes had passed since the first two pirates boarded the ship. I saw movement up by the house. Colin Wright and ATM Reza were walking toward the port side. One of the pirates was pointing an AK-47 at their backs. He was forcing them to rig the pilot ladder—a rope ladder that goes over the side—so the last two pirates could climb up.

I felt the boat lurch hard to one side. Then it rocked back, twenty degrees the other way. I knew what was going on. The first engineer, a big, easygoing Texan named Matt Fisher, was down in the steering room swinging the rudder. He was trying to keep the other two pi- rates from climbing the ladder. It didn't work, but he kicked up so much seawater that the little skiff got swamped and capsized. I watched it float away. Maybe we were hostages, but the pirates weren't getting off our boat, either. They were trapped, too.

After that, the crew belowdecks shut everything down—the engines, the electrical, everything. The Alabama slowly came to a stop until she was just sitting there, drifting and silent, like a ghost ship.

**8:45 A.M. **

There are two cranes on deck, one forward and one aft, that we use to lift cargo. They're about a hundred feet tall, and I figured that if I got up on one, I'd have a clear view to the bridge. Once I was in the cab, I opened a hatch, climbed out on top, and hid behind the massive roll of cable the crane uses. The pirates couldn't see me, but I could see everything that was happening on the bridge.

After about a half hour, Mike Perry climbed up to join me. He's an older guy, in his sixties, but to look at him you would swear he was in his forties—in good shape, smart, and real serious about his Mormon faith. I'm sure it helped keep him steady and calm that day.

Mike and I set an alternate frequency on the radio so we could talk without the pirates listening in, and then we started making plans. My whole life I'd been told, "The United States doesn't negotiate for hostages." And the way I saw it, I wasn't going to be the one to start now.

But there wasn't much we could do in broad daylight against four guys with assault rifles. We decided to wait until dark and then attack with whatever we could muster.

**9 A.M. **

The sky was clear, and the air was still, and the sun was climbing higher. The temperature was already getting into the 90s, and you could tell it was going to be a scorcher of a day. An hour on the crane and we were sweating pretty badly. We knew the crew in the safe room had to be miserable, because, make no mistake, that's a miserable place to be. It's at least twenty degrees hotter in there, and there's no real ventilation.

At about nine o'clock, Mike decided to climb down and see if he could get some water to the safe room. He dropped into one of the tunnels that run belowdecks. In bad weather, they allow you to get anywhere on the ship without getting soaked; now they let Mike and me move around without being seen.

I started getting antsy up in the crane, and I was getting dehydrated. I decided to move. I went down into the tunnels, too, and all the way to the hatch right next to the house. In the forward bosun shop, I put on a Nomex hood from a fire suit. It looks like something a ninja would wear, so I thought it might make me look a little scarier. Plus, it would keep the sun off my face. Then I got a roll of duct tape and a few chisels that would make decent stabbing weapons. I stuffed those in my sock.

In the tunnels on my way back to the crane, I heard Captain Phillips's voice come over the radio. "They want to see somebody," he said. "This is getting serious."

I found out later why the pirates were getting panicky. They'd sent Colin Wright, the third mate, to get the rest of the crew. But they didn't send a pirate to guard him, so Colin just went and hid. When he didn't come back, the pirates sent the helmsman and one of their own guys down. But then they didn't come back. Minutes ticked by. "If they don't see someone in five minutes," the captain said over the radio, "they're gonna start shooting people."

But he hadn't said the code word. In a situation like this, if the captain said "Come on out" or "It's all clear," it could be under some kind of duress, and he didn't want anyone to come out.

Mike Perry's voice came on the radio. "One down."

A surge of energy went through me. They'd gotten the pirate who'd gone down with the helmsman, ambushed him in a dark passageway, tied him up with wire restraints, gagged him, and dragged him into the safe room.

Until that minute, I thought we were screwed, plain and simple. But then it was like we'd intercepted a touchdown pass and taken it the other way. In that second, the momentum changed. We were going on the offensive.

I was pumped.

I abandoned the crane and went to check the guys in the safe room. There's a small hatch on deck that drops ten or twelve feet into the safe room, just large enough to get supplies down. I opened it and saw Ken Quinn, Will Rios, and the second engineer, Dick Matthews, looking up at me. They were all in bad shape. "We're dying down here," one of them said. "We got no water, no air."

There was a case of Sprite in my office. I brought that back and dropped it down. Then someone asked for the medical bag, and I snuck up to the hospital room to get it.

I thought there might be a VHF radio in the lifeboat so I could broadcast a Mayday, so I went there after I dropped the supplies. The lifeboat is thirty feet long and enclosed, like a big, bright orange football that rescue crews could see against the water. I crawled inside and started looking. The ship was dead quiet and kind of eerie with all the systems shut down, but that meant voices and footsteps carried in the breezeless ocean air. Which was good: I heard Captain Phillips coming, with a barefoot pirate holding a gun on him. I heard him say, "There's no one in there." They were right outside the lifeboat. I ducked behind a seat as the captain's head poked in, followed by the pirate's. "See? No one in here."

I listened to them walk away. I couldn't find the VHF radio, but I remembered that one was kept in the captain's room. That was four decks up, in the house—a long way to go without being seen, but I had no choice.

I made it up to the captain's quarters. The safe was open, and the empty money bag was on the floor. The pirates had gotten the cash, about $30,000. I grabbed the captain's radio and his cell phone and then scribbled a note—"Captain, we've got one in the steering room, I set off the epirb [the emergency position-indicating radio beacons, which send out a distress signal pinpointing their location], I've got your radio"—and put it with the other papers scattered on his desk. I figured the pirates couldn't read English.

**1 P.M. **

I climbed to the top of the crane and got ready to send a Mayday over the VHF. The problem was, though, that the bridge was on the same channel I had to use. Didn't matter. I had to make the call. "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday," I said. "This is the Maersk Alabama, U.S.-flagged ship, American crew. We've been taken hostage by four Somali pirates. Any vessels in the area come back on channel 16."

The pirates on the bridge were staring at the radio.

I repeated the Mayday, and then one of the pirates got on the radio. He said, "Who is this?"

I thought for a second. "I'm your worst fucking nightmare, pal," I said. "I'm in charge of this ship now, and if you want to see your friend again, you talk to me now."

"Fuck you."

"No, fuck you," I said. "You can leave now. Take the lifeboat, take the money, but this is an American ship."

"Fuck you."

"You're in big trouble," I said. "Obama's coming to get you." I knew their English wasn't good, but everyone in Africa knows Obama.

"Fuck Obama," the pirate said.

**4 P.M. **

Three long hours passed. I'd kept messing on the VHF for a while, talking in a thick southern accent. "Maersk Alabama," I said, "this is a coalition warship. We read you and are en route to your position." That was a trick Captain Phillips had taught me—have a conversation with yourself so the intruders would think the navy was coming.

I was trying to scare them like in a bad episode of Scooby-Doo. And I guess it worked. Captain Phillips came on our radios. The pirates were going to take our rescue boat, a small outboard, and leave. All they wanted was their friend back.

As the captain and the pirates were going down to the deck, Mike Perry and I went to the bridge. I stood out on the wing, and that's when I revealed myself. I pulled that big ninja hood off my head and just glared down at them. One of the pirates started jawing at me. "I'm Somali Mafia," he said.

I pulled up my sleeve and showed him one of my tattoos, like a gang sign, and laughed at him. "Me, too," I said.

The rescue boat was in the water with the captain and three pirates aboard. They called up and said they needed some fuel and supplies lowered. I went down to give them some fuel and got a good look at the pirates. They seemed calm, almost relad, smoking cigarettes and smiling, like, Okay, we didn't get the $3 million ransom, but we got $30,000. Not a bad adventure for the day.

I went inside to get the food and water. A minute later, Captain Phillips called on the radio. "The engine just stalled," he said. I looked out and saw them drifting, dead in the water. Now, this is important, because the rescue boat is an open boat, like a Boston Whaler. If they hadn't ended up in the lifeboat, there wouldn't have been a four-day standoff. If they'd been in the rescue boat, the navy snipers could've taken them out in about twenty minutes.

A few of us started getting the lifeboat ready. Will Rios, the bosun, volunteered to help get the boat to the pirates. The third engineer, John Cronan, got in first to make sure everything worked. Cronan checked all the equipment and said, "Yeah, it looks good." I told him to come back onto the ship.

"I'm not getting out," he said. "I'm going down, too."

He'd decided to go with Rios—to make sure nothing happened to him, maybe try to jump the pirates when they were even strength, three on three. That was amazing. Sailors always get each other's backs. Cronan handed me a picture of his girls. "If I don't come back," he said, "tell these girls I love them." And then we dropped the lifeboat into the sea.

Part of being a sailor is you're married to the sea, and you leave your loved ones at the dock. So your crew quickly becomes your second family. It's a bond most people can't relate to; even your worst enemy on the ship, you'd crawl into a fire to pull him out. That's why Mike Perry and I risked capture to bring our shipmates food and water. I couldn't imagine the horror of being trapped in that room, hoping your crewmates had a plan to get you out. I was proud we didn't let them down, and I know they wouldn't have let me down, either.

**7 P.M. **

The sun was setting. The lifeboat was at the bottom of the pilot ladder. One of the pirates kept his AK trained on Cronan, Rios, and Phillips; they had no chance of overpowering them. We'd kept the ambushed pirate, a kid named Abduwali Muse, on deck with us as insurance against them taking Captain Phillips hostage. I told the captain that once they had the boat ready, he should come up while Abduwali went down.

"No," the captain said. "I'll jump in the water once all the pirates are off."

"No, no," I said again. "You come up when he goes down. At the same time."

I thought he nodded in assent. But that's when it all went bad.

"Captain, you ready?" I shouted. "I'm sending him down." Muse went down; Cronan and Rios came up. "Okay," I said, "now get on the ladder." He just stood there looking up at us, the pirates pointing guns at him. "Captain," I shouted, "get on the ladder!"

"I'm just going to show them how to drive the boat," Captain Phillips said. The door closed, and then, the captain told me later, the pirates drew down on him. We didn't realize right away that they'd screwed us and snatched the captain. The lifeboat puttered away, and I was holding out hope that Captain Phillips was just going to do a quick loop and come back to the ladder. But the distance between us and them kept opening up.

I ordered the Alabama to follow them. Then I sprinted up to the bridge. We had a searchlight locked on the lifeboat. We were in touch with a coalition ship steaming toward us, and I radioed for them to send a plane to buzz the pirates. A fighter jet screamed in low—couldn't have been more than thirty feet off the water. I figured the pirates were scared pretty badly, but they didn't slow down.

I realized I'd gotten a battlefield promotion, and I was making the first command decisions of my career under the worst imaginable circumstances. A pirate attack, a possible man overboard—at that point we still thought it was possible that Captain Phillips had jumped from the boat—and the fire alarm had even gone off when a smoke buoy we'd deployed got hung up on the rail. And then the phone on the bridge started to ring every five seconds: Al Jazeera, CNN, NBC, ABC, Katie Couric. It seemed like every reporter in the world had to talk to us right then. At nine o'clock, when the night turned pure black, targets started popping up on the radar, and the VHF chatter was full of Somali dialects and Eastern European accents. The Somalis are holding hundreds of foreign sailors hostage, and they were forcing those crews to go out hunting fresh targets. "We're coming," they'd say. "We have more mother ships coming."

**APRIL 9, 1 A.M. **

We chased the lifeboat for six hours before we heard from Captain Phillips. He called on the radio and said the pirates would shut down if we'd shut down, and then we'd all wait until daylight to negotiate.

"Tell them they can come on board," I answered. "Tell them, 'Just throw down your weapons. We'll give you food. We'll take you back to Somalia.' "

He radioed back: The pirates wouldn't do it. They were not going to give us back the captain.

The U.S.S. Bainbridge, a guided-missile destroyer, arrived not long after. The navy wanted us to get out of those waters, to keep going to Mombasa. The shipping company wanted us moving, too. I didn't want to leave our captain, but all things considered, it was the right decision. The navy would take care of Captain Phillips; I had to take care of the Alabama and her crew.

We set course for Kenya with a navy security detail on board. It wasn't a regular combat team—more like the cooks and anyone else they could spare, almost all of them kids, too. But at least they had weapons.

As daylight broke, the crew were exhausted and nervous, with a long way to go through troubled waters. I gathered everyone, even the navy sailors, for a meeting.

"We have reports," I told everyone, "unconfirmed, that there are pirates mobilizing ships from the north and west. It seems like this whole situation is just the pirates trying to test a new administration with a show of force. And we're like the lab rats."

The crew nodded.

"We've got twelve hours before we get through this hellish part," I said. "I'm going to do everything I can to put this boat next to the dock, and anyone who doesn't want to help me do that, get out of the way." I paused. "Look at the guy next to you. Put your faith in him and he'll do the same for you. All we have is each other."

WE MADE IT TO Mombasa with no more trouble, even if the broken-down Kenyan navy didn't come out to escort us like I'd asked. Whenever we dock there and see naval vessels, I think, Why are you guys at the dock? Why aren't you out patrolling for pirates?

We waited in Mombasa for the standoff between the navy and the pirates to end. Far out at sea, Abduwali Muse had gone onto the Bainbridge to negotiate for the pirates, which saved his life: On the fourth day, snipers on the fantail of the Bainbridge took out the three pirates on the lifeboat with simultaneous head shots. Captain Phillips was free. When that happened, we started blasting "Sweet Home Alabama" through the loudspeakers, and we shot off some celebratory flares. The Kenyans got pissed and told us to knock it off, but we ignored them.

I still wonder if it was a coincidence that the captain was rescued on Easter Sunday, April 12. I know there were a lot of people praying for us, and I felt some higher power watching over us throughout everything. Maybe William Bainbridge had something to do with it. He was the commodore the navy named the destroyer after, and he was a pirate-fighter. He was also the commander of the last American vessel seized by pirates, off the coast of Tunisia in 1803. He was held captive for more than two years and vowed to exact revenge.

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